The École de Chirurgie under Construction

Hubert Robert painted The École de Chirurgie under Construction around 1773, a monumental architectural subject documenting the building of the new School of Surgery in Paris designed by Jacques Gondoin. Robert's interest in architectural construction — the scaffolding, the building materials, the workers in the act of creating a permanent monument — was the obverse of his better-known ruin paintings: where the ruins showed architecture in decay, the construction sites showed it being born. The combination of classical architectural design and contemporary building activity connected the present moment to the ancient tradition that French Neoclassical architecture was claiming to inherit.

Robert renders the construction site with the same poetic sensitivity he brought to ancient ruins, finding visual drama in scaffolding and unfinished walls. The atmospheric light and animated workers give the building project the romantic grandeur of an archaeological excavation.